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1981 Vedic Chronology & Geological Time Scale

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1981 Vedic Chronology & Geological Time Scale THE SA-VIJNANAM PROJECT Working Paper Number 1 VEDIC CHRONOLOGY AND THE GEOLOGICAL TIME SCALE by Richard L. Thompson THE SA-VIJNA.NAM PROJECT Working Paper Number 1. VEDIC CHRONOLOGY AND THE GEOLOGICAL TIME SCALE by Richard L. Thompson Published by the Sa-vijfianam Project 51 West Allens Lane, Philadelphia, Pa. 19119 @ 1981 Richard L. Thompson All rights reserved. Printed in U. S. A. Vedic C hronolo gy and the Geological Time Scale In this essay we will compare the system of chronology described in the Vedic literatures of India with the chronological system devised by geologists and paleontologists to date the history of life on the earth. Since the time of Charles Lyell in the mid-nineteenth century, geologists have accepted that the history of the earth must be measured in millions or even hundreds of mil- lions of years--a view that contrasts sharply with earlier Christian chronology that set the date of the earth's creation at about 4,004 B. C. At the present time geologists estimate that the earth has existed for some 4.6 billion years, and that highly organized life forms have existed for about 600 million years. It is not so widely known that the Vedic liter- atures of India, such as the Bhagavad-gHii. and the Srimad-Bhagavatam, also give an account of history that extends over hundreds of millions and even billions of years. The Vedic and geolog- ical systems of chronology have completely dif- ferent origins, but they divide time into broadly similar subdivisions, and thus it is natural to ask whether or not they have anything in common. In this essay we will present some evidence indicat- ing that these two chronological systems can, in fact, be correlated with one another in a very precise way. We begin in Sections 1 and 2 by giving brief outlines of the Vedic and geological systems of 1 chronology. In Section 3 we describe the correla- tion that can be found between the two systems. This section is presented in the form of a series of questions and answers which are intended to bring out various important points concerning the statistical evaluation of the correlation. Finally, in Section 4 we discuss some possible interpretations of this correlation. 1. Vedic Chronology Our information concerning Vedic chronology is taken from the Srimad-Bhagavatam( 1) and the Surya-siddhiinta( 2). These literatures maintain that the universe has been existing for some one and a half quadrillion years, and that events have unfolded during this time in accordance with a number of interlocking historical cycles. Of these cycles, the kalpa, or day of Brahma, is the long- est that will concern us. Each kalpa lasts for 4.32 billion solar years and is divided into 14 manvan- tara periods. Each manvantara is divided into 71 divya-yugas of 4.32 million years apiece, and thus each manvantara lasts for 306,720,000 solar years. Each manvantara is preceded by a transitional period, or sandhyii. of .4 divya-yugas, and the last manvantara in a kalpa is also followed by such a sandhya. We note that 14 x 71 + 15 x .4 = 1, 000, so that the lengths of the 14 manvantaras and 15 sandhyas add up to one kalpa of 4.32 bil- lion years. Both the manvantaras and the divya-yugas rep- resent patterns of recurrence in the course of universal history. Each manvantara corresponds to the reign of a particular Manu--a kind of demigod who is entrusted with certain important duties in the management of this world as a whole. The end of each manvantara is marked by a period of dev- astation in which many life forms are annihilated and subsequently recreated. This devastation may take the form of a world -wide flood. 2 Each divya-yuga is broken down into four yugas called satya. treta, dvapara, and kali. and the lengths of these periods are respectively 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10% of the total length of a divya-yuga. According to Vedic chronology, we are now in the seventh manvantara of the current kalpa. This manvantara is named after Vaivasvata, the present Manu. Twenty-seven divya-yugas of this manvan- tara have elapsed(3). According to astronomical calculations based on the Siirya-siddhiinta. we are now in roughly the 5,OOOth year of the kali-yuga of the twenty-eighth divya-yuga. Manvantara Starting Date Vaivasvata 120.533 428.981 Raivata 737.429 Tamasa 1045.877 Uttama 1354.325 Svarocil?a 1662.779 Svayambhuva 1971. 221 Table 1. The starting dates of the first seven manvantaras of this kalpa. The dates are in millions of years before the present. Table 1 lists the starting dates of the first sev- en manvantaras of this kalpa. These dates were calculated using the Vedic chronological data pre- sented in this section, and they are given in mil- lions of years before the present. 2. The Geological Time Scale In the modern science of geology the history of the earth is divided into two major parts, the Phanerozoic and the Prephanerozoic. The Phanero- zoic is the most recent and well-known of these divisions, and it extends from the present to about 3 600 million years into the past. The Phanerozoic era corresponds to those strata of sedimentary ma- terial on the earth's surface that tend to contain abundant and clearly recognizable fossils. On the basis of these fossils, paleontologists have divided this period of time into numerous subdivisions. They have assigned dates to these subdivisions by a complex process involving radiometric dating and various methods of analyzing and correlating sed- imentary strata. Table 2 summarizes the subdivisions of the Phanerozoic era. Two systems of dates for these subdivisions are given, both taken from a paper by Harland, Smith, and Wilcock ( 4). The leftmost column of figures gives the geological dates deter- mined by a group of Russian workers, headed by Division Afanassyef Holmes Pleistocene 2 2 .....C) 0 Pliocene 12 7 N 0 Miocene 26 12, 18.5, 26 c: Cl) Oligocene 37 , 31. 5, 37.5 u Eocene 60 45, 49, 53.5 ......C) Paleocene 67 58.5, 65 0 N { Cretacious 137 100, 136 0 00 Jurassic 195 162, 172, 193 Cl) Triassic 240 205, 215, 225 Permian 285 240, 280 ......C) Carboniferous 350 325, 345 0 N Devonian 410 359, 370, 395 0 Q) Silurian 440 435 ....... C'j Ordovician 500 445, 500 J:l.. Cambrian 570-600 515, 540, 570 Table 2. Two geological time scales for the Phanerozoic era. The dates are in millions of years before the present, and they mark the beginnings of the corresponding geological periods. Multiple entries on a line date finer period subdivisions. 4 Afanassyef, and we will refer to this system of dates as the Afanassyef scale. The figures in the rightmost column are the dates determined by a group of American and European investigators, and we will refer to this system as the Holmes scale. All dates are given in millions of years before the present. When several dates separated by com- mas are given for a particular subdivision, these correspond to the further breakdown of that sub- division into upper, lower, and sometimes middle periods. (In the Oligocene, figures were available only for the middle and lower periods.) When a range of dates was given in Harland, Smith, and Wilcock for a particular subdivision, we have re- placed the range by a single date representing its midpoint. The two exceptions to this rule are the Pleistocene, where we have specified 2 in place of 1. 5-2, and the Cambrian in the Afanassyef scale, where we have simply specified a range of 570-600. In contrast to the Phanerozoic era, geologists do not have a very clear picture of the Prephan- erozoic period of the earth's history. There is an assemblage of fossils of what appear to be soft- bodied metazoan organisms, which has been assigned dates of 570 to 720 million years ago. This assem- blage is known as the Ediacara fauna, and it is thought to constitute the oldest clear-cut evidence for the existence of multicellular organisms on the earth(5). In earlier sediments there are structures called stromatolites, which are believed to have been prod uced by the growth of algae, and microscopic structures that have been interpreted as fossils of single-celled algae and bacteria. Apart from this, no other direct evidence for the existence of life in the Prephanerozoic has been found up to the present time. 3. The Correlation between the Vedic and Geological Time Scales In this section we shall discuss a numerical re- lationship that can be seen to hold between the 5 geological and the Vedic chronological systems. We begin by raising a fundamental question that casts doubt on the very possibility that these two sys- tems could be significantly related: Question: It seems to me unlikely that the Vedic and the geological accounts of the past could be genuinely related to one another. These two accounts are drastically different in content. According to the Vedas, life has existed in all its variety since time immemorial, and various popUlations of living beings have been repeat- edly manifested and annihilated in accordance with a series of historical cycles. In contrast, the modern geological account of the past is evolutionary. The fossil record reveals a pro- gression of life forms beginning hundreds of millions of years ago with primitive algae and bacteria, and culminating only recently with the appearance of man. The origins of these two systems are also completely different, for one is based on ancient mythology, and the other is based on scientific observation.
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